Of late years things have changed for the worse in this respect. Women are not always respected now; and the free distribution of rifles among the Kurds has done away with all the old equality. This was done, when the late Sultan raised the “Hamidie” battalions; partly for the defence of his throne, partly perhaps with the idea of keeping the Christians in subjection. Now when to odds in numbers you add the additional handicap implied in the difference between Mauser and flint-lock, the position becomes impossible; and the balance has since inclined steadily against the Christian tribes.
The fights of old were not usually very deadly, for though[{169}] a good deal of home-made powder was burned, these mountaineers are tough, and hard to kill. The writer has known an instance of a Kurd who was shot through the body in a tribal skirmish; after which he walked home, and observed to his wife, “Beastly nuisance this: here is a brand-new shirt, and two holes in it; and it will want washing too!”
Jilu is a curious little mountain canton—a fan of narrow gorges descending from the rugged Galiashin range, the highest peak of which, Supa Durig, approaches 14,000 feet. Their union forms the Oramar River, that considerable tributary of the Zab mentioned in the previous chapter. Nothing but “terrace cultivation” is possible on the bare rocky slopes; and the earth that composes the fields has usually to be carried to the spot where the terrace wall has been built to retain it, in baskets on men’s backs. A spot has to be chosen which is reasonably safe from avalanches; else the poor farmer may find, some spring morning, that not only his crop, but his whole field, has been swept away in the night.
Men of Jilu have a harder life than even the average mountaineer of Kurdistan; and hence it is, no doubt, that they have developed the wanderlust, which is far more strongly marked in them than in most of their fellow countrymen. They wander everywhere in search of work, though they always drift back to this strange little canton at the end. Starting with nothing but the clothes they stand up in, and very ragged clothes too, they apparently never starve, and occasionally bring back a fortune. Men are to be found in Jilu who helped to build the forts of Port Arthur; and who corrected the writer on certain points connected with that fortress when the siege was being discussed in the patriarch’s diwan. Who served guns on board the American battleships off Cuba; or have (goodness alone knows how) found some charitable person to give them a university education in America. One of these wanderers brought back £3000; or, to be accurate, brought it to within a few days’ journey of his home, when his luck deserted him at last, for he met a party of Kurds,[{170}] and the robbers made the haul of their wicked lives. It was the cruellest trick of fortune; but he owned to have made the money in one very doubtful trade that these fellows practise; and we could not avoid the feeling that the thief by violence had as good a right to the spoil as had the thief by fraud.
The trade in question is this. Jilu men have made the discovery that folk in Europe and America have much sympathy with an ancient and struggling church, and are willing to give considerable sums to assist it. So they collect for “schools and orphanages.” Men go by the dozen to gather in money, nominally for these objects; but actually spend it on their own needs alone. American police know the trick well, and indeed have invented the term “fake-priest” as descriptive of this branch of the great profession of roguery.
One can feel some sympathy with the rascals who thus answer the old question “why did Allah create fools, if not for the profit of wise men?” They are in absolute and utter poverty; and they know that by going to foreign parts, and there “slinging a yarn” that they would not expect their own people to take seriously, they can gather sums that mean wealth to them. It is a great temptation; and it will continue till such time as charity and common sense begin to run in double harness, and charitable folk at home refuse to extend to these Orientals the trust they would never repose in one of their own countrymen.
Further, tried by their own standards, these Orientals are not cheating. An Eastern does not understand the administration of a Trust. What you give, you give; and may Allah reward you for your charity. But, when you have given it, it is yours no longer; and why should you complain if its owner finds that he needs it for something different to his original intent. You gave it for a school? Well, he really meant to use it for a school then; but afterwards he found that he needed it for his own family. It is his; why not? Narrow-minded man, why use the ugly word thief?
So, while sympathizing with these rascals, we advise no[{171}] man to give them money; or even to trust the interesting documents they produce, sealed with the patriarchal seal. Forgery is singularly easy in a land where the seal is the sole signature, and any seal-cutter can copy it from an impression.
So the “Jiluayi” wander; reproducing to-day in all details the seller of relics who rode to Canterbury with Chaucer. One enterprising member of the fraternity made a considerable sum by selling in four Russian villages the four feet of the ass on which our Lord rode into Jerusalem; and only got into trouble when the temptation to supply the demand of a fifth village for another foot overpowered his prudence. Another, in India, suffered even worse things. He had gathered about £300 from various places; mainly by his absolute refusal to go away from anywhere till something was given him. But in Malabar he was arrested as a Russian spy, and dragged before a zealous native magistrate. Knowing, by experience at home, the danger of telling the truth to any official, and particularly of owning to the possession of money, he declared that he was a very poor man and had not a penny in the world; thus sticking to the lie, when the truth would probably have secured his safety. The magistrate handed him over to the police to be searched, and they of course found the gold upon him, and appropriated the whole. Then they reproduced their victim in court, saying that as far as they could ascertain he had spoken the truth, and that he really had no money. On this, he was discharged.
The central shrine and cathedral of the district of Jilu is the ancient church of Mar Zeia, a building remarkable enough to merit a word of description to itself. In structure it is not very different from any other mountain church; being a mere rectangular box of stone, with a roof vaulted within and flat without, and arranged according to the usual type of Nestorian building, which we must describe later. It is its contents that are unique.